I will admit something right now. I still stare
at a blank page and just freeze up sometimes.
It happens to all of us. Oh, absolutely. Yeah,
it really does. I just sit there looking at the
cursor and the cursor just blinks back at you.
It expects absolute brilliance on demand. That
blank page is deeply intimidating. It is. But
imagine if like 95 % of your marketing work happened
in just one tool. I mean, research, writing,
designing, publishing. Right. Not just some basic
chat bot you argue with. We are talking about
a full automated team. That is exactly what we
are building today. Welcome to today's deep dive.
We are exploring a really fascinating architectural
system. We are going to build an AI marketing
team. And we are doing this inside a workspace
called Codex. Yeah, and whether you are a creator,
a founder, or just someone trying to scale your
ideas, we want to show you a powerful workflow.
You are going to move from that terrifying blank
page to a massive automated content system. We
are not just going to list a bunch of software
either. No, definitely not. We are going to explore
the actual underlying mechanics, like how do
we ground the AI properly? How do we build specialized
departments for research, design, and video?
And how do we finally tame your chaotic inbox?
Let's start with the foundation. What exactly
is Codex? Because it feels fundamentally different
from standard chatbots. Oh, it is completely
different. Codex is not a chatbot where you just
type a prompt and get text back. Codex is a super
app workspace. It actually executes your tasks
natively. You can preview apps right in the interface.
You can edit spreadsheets dynamically. You basically
call upon specific skills and plugins. Wait,
let me pause right there. So skills are basically
reusable instruction files, right? They tell
your AI exactly what to do. Exactly. And plugins
are bundles of specific skills. They are grouped
together for your AI agent to use autonomously.
You have a left panel for your chats. You have
a middle panel for the agent's actual work. And
you have a right panel for live visual preview.
So Codex actually does the work instead of just
talking about it. Exactly. It is a workspace
where your AI actually executes the tasks. Okay.
That makes sense. But to build this team, we
first have to fix a glaring problem with AI.
Generative models often give us incredibly generic
outputs. Oh, completely. You ask for a marketing
hook and it sounds completely robotic. It feels
totally devoid of any real human soul. Yeah,
and the fix for that is a concept called grounding.
Grounding means giving your AI specific, high
-quality examples to learn from first. Think
about how a large language model actually works
under the hood. Right. It predicts the next most
likely word based on its training data. Exactly.
So if you ask a standard AI for a viral intro,
it just guesses based on everything. It pulls
from incredibly broad Internet data. It mixes
the styles of a fitness creator and a B2B sauce
founder. And then it throws in a finance educator
for good measure. Right. So you get one bland,
completely useless output. It is kind of like
handing a chef a very specific family recipe
rather than just saying, make me some dinner.
If you do not ground the AI, it is cooking with
every single ingredient on the Internet. That
is a perfect analogy. That is why you're. output
tastes like a strange mix of sauce jargon and
fitness tropes you absolutely have to limit the
ingredients instead of letting it guess You feed
the AI actual YouTube transcripts. You give it
your personal swipe files. You share your specific,
highly detailed brand guidelines. You give it
top performing hooks that you admire. Once the
AI has those specific references, it narrows
its mathematical vector space. The probability
of it generating your specific tone just skyrockets.
So a normal workflow is just a prompt leading
to a generic output. A grounded workflow finds
specific structural patterns in your curated
references. Yeah. That extra context changes
the output quality immensely. Does grounding
basically give the AI a creative compass? Right.
Specific references prevent generic robotic sounding
outputs completely. So since grounding requires
great references, where do we get them? We build
a research department. We start with the YouTube
Researcher skill. It pulls video transcripts
to study hooks, pacing, and specific word choice.
It looks at how a successful creator transitions
seamlessly between ideas. Let's look at the actual
mechanism. To set this up, you use an API tool
like SuperData, right? An API is basically a
software bridge. Yeah, exactly. It lets two applications
trade data quietly in the background. It sends
a request to YouTube's server. It grabs the raw
text file of the captions. It strips out all
the messy timestamps. Then it feeds a clean text
block right into the AI's context window. You
got it. So you could study someone like Cleo
Abram, and you feed her transcripts in, and the
AI generates short -form hooks matching her exact
rapid -fire pacing. Or let's say you pull Andres
Karpathy's LLM video. Karpathy is brilliant at
taking incredibly dense nodes of information
and breaking them down. Oh, he really is. You
learn to explain complex topics in his beginner
-friendly teaching style. Because marketing is
not just about writing faster. It is about understanding
and transferring ideas clearly. Exactly. And
once you have that external data, you need your
internal data. That is where you add the ReadWise
CLI skill. CLI stands for Command Line Interface.
Meaning your AI can use direct text commands
to control ReadWise. It skips clunky visual menus
entirely. Right. And Readwise is essentially
a digital second brain. It stores your saved
notes, book highlights, and podcast transcripts.
It holds your saved tweets and those random midnight
thoughts. Because most good content does not
actually start from a blank page. It starts from
a fragment of something you already saved. I
have to push back here, though. My Readwise is
an absolute mess. I mean, whose isn't? Right.
So how does the AI know which of my random half
-baked saved notes are actually worth turning
into content? A lot of those notes... is complete
garbage right and that is exactly where skill
stacking comes in skill stacking means combining
multiple ai abilities into one automated workflow
you combine the readwise skill with the youtube
researcher skill Codex Cross references them.
It finds the exact mathematical overlap. It merges
your private, messy idea bank with proven market
data. Oh, I see. Yeah. You ask it to review your
saved items from the past week. Then you ask
it to study the transcripts of your last 10 successful
videos. The AI finds the semantic overlap. Then
it generates 20 new video ideas that are both
deeply personal and statistically proven. It
merges my personal taste with proven market data.
Exactly. Your personal ideas combined with proof.
Okay, so now we have researched solid data -backed
ideas, but we need to communicate them. Plain
text is not always enough for an audience. We
need to build a design department. For that,
we use the ExcalDraw diagram skill. ExcalDraw
creates these simple, unpolished visual structures.
It uses boxes, simple arrows, and minimal text.
Under the hood, ExcalDraw is really just generating
a JSON file, isn't it? Yeah, exactly. The AI
writes code dictating coordinate points. Codex
then renders those coordinates as a visual diagram
on your screen. It is phenomenal for explaining
abstract concepts very quickly. For example,
you can visually explain how your skills and
plugins connect. Right. You just need the clear,
bare -bones shape of the idea. So Excalibur is
like the quick whiteboard sketch you do with
a colleague over coffee. It's about clarity.
But sometimes you need real polish. We all know
the danger of overdesigning a simple concept.
I have definitely spent three hours tweaking
a graphic that should have been a napkin sketch.
We have all been there. But when you do need
that final polish, that brings us to the paper
MCP skill. MCP stands for Model Context Protocol.
It is basically a standardized protocol letting
AI safely operate external software tools. Right.
And PaperMCP is for polished UI and high -end
layouts. Think animated explainers and gorgeous
website mock -ups. It is perfect for YouTube
thumbnail concepts and slick Instagram carousels.
Excalidraw is for quick, structural thinking.
Paper is for when the visual needs to be shared
publicly with clients. And you can use subagents
to speed this entire process up, right? Subagents
are smaller, specialized. AI helpers handling
parallel tasks. Exactly. One subagent is researching
the color palette while another is building the
layout structure. And with paper, you get live
steering. Live steering. Yeah. You can literally
watch the AI design the graphic in the right
panel. You get feedback mid -process. You just
type, fix the overlap on the top left, make the
label slightly shorter, the AI adjusts the code,
and the design updates instantly. You guide it
exactly like a creative director looking over
a designer's shoulder. So we use Excalibur for
clarity and paper for polish. Yeah. Sketch the
structure. Static visuals are incredibly useful,
but modern marketing constantly demands motion.
We need quick iteration and dynamic content.
We need to build the video and media lab. This
is where things get really advanced. We use tools
called Remotion and Hyperframes. Remotion provides
clean, professional UI and overlays. Think of
a slick seven -section YouTube intro graphic.
And Hyperframes handles advanced motion and complex,
realistic physics. Right. What is fascinating
is that Remotion is entirely code -based. It
uses React. The AI is not dragging and dropping
clips on a time machine. It is writing React
components that mathematically define where a
visual element lives at any given millisecond.
Whoa. Beat. Imagine generating complex video
keyframes. Like an animated phone flying in,
showing a scrolling group chat, and zooming out
into a logo. Just by typing a single descriptive
sentence. Beat. It honestly feels a little bit
like magic. It changes everything about media
production. Because it is code, you can tell
the AI to change the background gradient color
exactly at the 10 -second mark. You can add a
smooth ease -in spin right before the exit transition.
Right. You do not have to build those keyframes
manually ever again. You can also reuse old templates
effortlessly. You just ask Codex to update the
text and swap the brand colors. Then you export
the final render straight into Premiere Pro or
CapCut for the final polish. Exactly. Now let's
talk about the Gen Media Mini app. A mini app
in Codex is a shared visual workspace for you
and the AI agent. This specific app uses the
FAL API for its media generation. I want to explain
the mechanism here. The FAL API is essentially
a lightning -fast cloud engine. It handles the
massive computational weight of rendering generative
media almost instantly. Yeah, so your local machine
doesn't crash. And how does that specific media
workflow actually look in practice? The AI generates
four different thumbnail options based on specific
reference images. For example, it mimics the
bold, contrasting visual style of Matt Wolfe.
The options populate immediately in a visual
grid within the mini app. It stores your image
-to -video outputs and upscaled videos all in
one place. The visual grid is a game changer.
The human looks at the grid and picks the best
one. Then you ask the AI to refine that specific
choice. You tell it to dim the background lighting.
You add bold white text to the foreground. You
make the main subject pop with higher contrast.
You do not have to guess what the prompt will
do. You iterate visually. Exactly. Visual grid
stops us from endless scrolling and chat. Yes.
Side -by -side comparison speeds up your creative
decisions. We'll be right back after this short
break. And we are back. The content is researched,
designed, and fully rendered. Now we have to
manage the actual business side of things. We
have to distribute the work and handle the inbound
traffic. It is time for the operations department.
We use the email manager or the brand deal manager
skill. It actively searches your inbox for valuable
sponsorships. We all know your inbox gets incredibly
messy very fast. It is a chaotic stream of unstructured
text. Missing the right email can mean missing
a massive brand deal. Oh, absolutely. I want
to focus on the logic here. It doesn't just read
words. It filters out the noise by running logical
operations. It removes duplicate threads. It
checks the brand's audience fit against your
core demographics. Yes. It actively filters for
actual paid opportunities versus people just
asking for free exposure. It parses all that
unstructured data into a highly organized priority
table. The table explicitly shows the brand,
the offer amount, the audience fit, the priority
level, and the exact next step. For example,
it flags a high -paying sauce tool as an immediate
high priority. It flags a random, vague agency
email as a very low priority. It even integrates
directly with your account? API to find open
slots for intro calls. Yeah. It's incredibly
organized. But wait, if I let an AI filter my
inbox, isn't there a massive risk it archives
a $10 ,000 brand deal just because the email
was formatted weirdly? That is a totally valid
concern, which is why the AI does not delete
anything. It simply labels and categorizes. It
builds the priority table for your review. You
still see everything, but the high value signals
are pushed to the top of the pile. That makes
sense. What about publishing the actual content
we created? use the Buffer publisher skill. It
moves the generated approved drafts out of the
Codex chat environment. It places them straight
into a structured scheduling queue. Good ideas
completely disappear if they stay buried in old
chat threads. Buffer acts as a dedicated holding
space. Right. You review your recent research.
You choose the five absolute strongest ideas
for LinkedIn. The AI drafts the posts and adds
them securely to Buffer. I love this because
it forces a separation between the creation brain
and the publishing brain. Trying to do both at
the exact same time is a guaranteed recipe for
creative burnout. But there is a vital non -negotiable
rule here. You must never automate the final
send. Never. The AI drafts the sponsor reply.
The AI queues the social post. But the human
always clicks approve. Your money, your reputation,
and your relationships are on the line. Exactly.
So it acts as a highly organized gatekeeper for
my inbox. Great. It sorts out the noise. You
make the final call. Hearing all these different
skills and departments can feel completely overwhelming.
How do we actually build this system without
breaking our current workflow? Well, the core
building principle is patience. Do not try to
build 20 skills on day one. That creates a very
messy, fragile system. The progression should
be simple and deliberate. Start with a single
manual task. Improve the prompt carefully over
a few days. Once the output is excellent, save
it as a reusable skill. You just tell Codex to
save that exact workflow for future use. And
you only automate the process once the output
is reliably good. If the output is messy, automation
just creates messy work much faster. Yeah. You
can automate a daily read -wise summary to hit
your inbox at 8 in the morning. But you should
only do that when you actually love reading the
daily output. Exactly. And that brings us to
the... Ultimate big idea of this deep dive, skill
stacking. One single skill is definitely helpful,
but chaining the YouTube researcher plus ReadWise
plus Excalidraw is absolute magic. It equals
a fully automated, unstoppable assembly line.
We really must highlight the final 10 % rule.
The AI handles the heavy lifting, the unstructured
data sorting, and the busy work. It creates the
rough first drafts and the various visual options.
But you are the creative director. Taste. judgment,
and high -level strategy strictly belong to the
human. The AI simply gives you more cognitive
space to think clearly. It does. So my role shifts
from being the intern to the creative director.
Exactly. The AI grinds through the work. You
direct the vision. Let us bring this deep dive
to a close. I want you to think about this for
a second. If an AI system can perfectly mimic
our pacing patterns, parse our private notes,
and flawlessly design our graphics, does our
true enduring value as creators actually come
from our imperfections? Maybe the completely
unexpected, unpatterned connections that only
human intuition can make are the only things
AI will never be able to replicate. Two sec silence.
That is a profound way to look at it. The imperfections
are the signature. Pick just one repetitive task
today. Take something that drains your energy.
Run it through an AI, refine the prompt, and
see what happens. Just start building the foundation.
Thanks for joining us. We will catch you on the
next deep dive.